


Certitude

by badboy_fangirl



Category: The Good Wife (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 13:01:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10640370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badboy_fangirl/pseuds/badboy_fangirl
Summary: Alicia measures the value of fantasies versus realities.





	

**Author's Note:**

> My author's notes were so young and so innocent. I had no idea that one day this show would rip out my heart and jump all over it.
> 
> I ship, therefore I am. I ship Will/Alicia, therefore I fic. :D
> 
> Spoilers thru 1x18 Doubt, with dialogue lifted from that episode.

Sometimes she thinks she lived a fantasy life for 15 years with Peter, and then in a poof of stupidity, it all came to a screeching halt of reality; one that made everything she believed in and based all her life choices on seem not to matter at all.   
  
It wasn't that she thought her husband had spent all those years lying to her and misleading her, but his infidelity had nullified everything good and real between them. By one terrible indiscretion (or many in Peter's case), he had taken away the significance of every other event in their married life.  
  
She only had Grace and Zach, and their very real presence, to remind her that it had been real at some point.  
  
The urge to indulge in other fantasies--happier ones--didn't come immediately. She'd been working at the law firm for a few months before it suddenly came back to her, those weeks in college when Will had made an earnest effort to dissuade her from dating Peter, and date him instead.  
  
All they'd shared back then was one passionate night, but she'd known her heart was already with Peter, and it hadn't been fair to either of them. So she'd told Will it was just bad timing, and that had been true. If she'd met him just a month or two earlier, it might have been different. Will was a few years younger--he'd been in his first year of law school, and she in her last. She'd been reasonable and logical about her choice, as well as following her heart after Peter.  
  
Now, Will offered an alternate reality fantasy. What if they had gotten together instead? What if her children were his, not Peter's? What if, every night of her life, she came home to someone who looked at her like she caused him the sweetest kind of pain?  
  
There were other  _what if_  questions that plagued her, too.  
  
Like what if Peter had never cheated, or, at the very least, had never been caught? See, the fantasies about Will were much more pleasant to dwell on.  
  
When he kissed her (and she kissed him back), she'd gone back to a simpler time. Escape had been right before her, escape to a world where she never had to feel betrayal of the worst kind. Ultimately, though, what had she done? She'd chosen Peter again.  
  
This time, though, it made her sick to her stomach, and she felt like the betrayer, even though that was the most ludicrous thing in the world.  
  
She hadn't cheated on anyone--except in her heart. It was ironic really. In college, Peter had been in her heart, and she'd slept with Will, but now Will was in her heart so she slept with Peter.  
  
 _Oh, God._  
  
It was so complicated, and above all else she needed her job, not just for the money, but for her own sanity. It was the only thing in front of her she could solve, one case at a time; one client and then the next, an endless line of people who needed her help. A welcome distraction from the reality, and the fantasy, that had taken over her life.  
  
So she uses that as her defense when he comes into her office. It works, and he leaves, and she's not forced to admit anything, except to herself. It's so dangerous. She's walking a line. One that she's not sure she doesn't want to cross.  
  
She comes to work every day, in part, because she wants to see him.  _Needs_  to see him. Can't  _not_  see him.  
  
Several days later, when her phone wakes her from a sound sleep on her living room sofa, and she sees it's him, she thinks maybe he made up the reason to call her, though the case was going badly, and they all know it. Part of her hopes that's why he's called even as she glances around furtively to make sure that none of her family hears her end of the conversation.  
  
His voice is soft, wistful even, as he says, "When I look at you during the day, I want to know what you're thinking."  
  
 _No, you don't_ , she thinks. Because it's all mixed up, lust and want, need and purging, Will and Peter, all in a jumbled mess in her head. In her heart. But she says, "Sometimes, I don't even know what I'm thinking." Which isn't really a lie. "Will..."  
  
"Yeah?" he says when she doesn't continue.  
  
 _Kill the fantasy, Alicia, it's for the best_. "If it had been differently. At Georgetown, if it had been us and not Peter, we would have lasted a week." She feels like Peter's mother is standing over her shoulder insisting that she say this. The truth. One version of it, anyway.  
  
He laughs softly, his words tumbling out with surety. "No, we wouldn't've."  
  
She's insistent. "We would've!" Pressing forward, she adds, "It's romantic because it  _didn't_  happen. If it had happened, it would have just... been life."  
  
He's quiet, just for half a beat, and then he says, "I was half in love with you then. Now--"  
  
"Will, don't say that. Please." She can't hear a reality, or fantasy, right now. She doesn't know what she might do. Something she'll regret? Something she won't?  
  
He sighs, the sound more real than actual breath over the nape of her neck. Her whole body floods with heat, and she feels him moving over her, his mouth on hers, his hands in her hair,  _him_  inside her.  
  
She aches; she longs.  
  
So she hangs up the phone before he says anything else. She turns it off so that if he calls back, she doesn't know.  
  
But she doesn't go to Peter's room. She goes to hers, locking the door behind her and slides her fingers inside her panties. She imagines Will, real and believable in front of her.  
  
It isn't the fantasy of his hands on her body, or his penis inside her that makes her come a few short minutes later. It's his eyes, and the emotion she's seen there that she knows is absolute.


End file.
